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Original Essays | May 1, 2013

Josh Hanagarne: IMG Seven Books That Actually Changed My Life

5 comments By Josh Hanagarne

I'd predict that 99 percent of the small talk in the staff elevator at my library involves the following question and its answers: "Are you reading... Continue »
  1. $18.20 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

    The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

    Josh Hanagarne 9781592407873
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1 Partner Warehouse Literature- A to Z

Housekeeping

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Housekeeping Cover

ISBN13: 9780374525187
ISBN10: 0374525188
Condition: Student Owned
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Only 1 left in stock at $8.00!

 

Awards

Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award
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Synopses & Reviews

Please note that used books may not include additional media (study guides, CDs, DVDs, solutions manuals, etc.) as described in the publisher comments.

Publisher Comments:

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead mother. The family house is in the small town of Fingerbone on a glacial lake in the Far West, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience.

Review:

"So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn't want to miss any pleasure it might yield." The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Here's a first novel that sounds as if the author has been treasuring it up all her life....You can feel in the book a gathering voluptuous release of confidence, a delighted surprise at the unexpected capacities of language, a close, careful fondness for people that we thought only saints felt." Anatole Broyard, The New York Times

Review:

"I found myself reading slowly, then more slowly — this is not a novel to be hurried through, for every sentence is a delight." Doris Lessing

Review:

"So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn't want to miss any pleasure it might yield." Le Anne Schreiber, The New York Times Book Review
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About the Author

Marilynne Robinson is also the author of Mother Country, an examination of Great Britain's role in the radioactive pollution of the world's environment. She teaches as the University of Iowa Writer's Program.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
Tom Wagner, May 26, 2009 (view all comments by Tom Wagner)
"They can always get you for increasingly erratic behaviour. (M. Robinson, HOUSEKEEPING)"

That is the intriguing signature line of a woman on an online fountain pen group I frequent, so when I saw the book I had to read it! A fabulous read, even better than her later, more polished, Gilead. The writing is so tight, the heroines so real, you'll feel you know these folks.
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Elizabeth R, May 21, 2009 (view all comments by Elizabeth R)
After reading Gilead by Mariynne Robinson, I loved it so much I went in search of others novels that she had written. Housekeeping is her first novel and it did not disappoint. She tells her story of orphaned sisters that are placed in the care of their eccentric aunt and the ways they all must adapt.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780374525187
Author:
Robinson, Marilynne
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Location:
New York :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Girls
Subject:
Death
Subject:
Mothers
Subject:
Aunts
Subject:
Eccentrics and eccentricities
Subject:
Domestic fiction
Subject:
General Fiction
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
FIC045000
Copyright:
c198
Edition Number:
1st pbk. ed.
Edition Description:
First Noonday paperback ed.
Series Volume:
3
Publication Date:
19970930
Binding:
TP
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
224
Dimensions:
8.22x5.47x.61 in. .46 lbs.
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Related Subjects

Arts and Entertainment » Film and Television » Novelization
Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z
History and Social Science » American Studies » Popular Culture

Housekeeping Used Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$8.00 In Stock
Product details 224 pages Farrar, Straus and Giroux - English 9780374525187 Reviews:
"Review" by , "So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn't want to miss any pleasure it might yield."
"Review" by , "Here's a first novel that sounds as if the author has been treasuring it up all her life....You can feel in the book a gathering voluptuous release of confidence, a delighted surprise at the unexpected capacities of language, a close, careful fondness for people that we thought only saints felt."
"Review" by , "I found myself reading slowly, then more slowly — this is not a novel to be hurried through, for every sentence is a delight."
"Review" by , "So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn't want to miss any pleasure it might yield."
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